EDITORIAL
India and Pakistan are too near the brink

Secretary of State Colin Powell had hoped to let India and Pakistan sort out their latest contretemps by themselves, but we must hope he now sees that as a luxury the world can't afford.

The two countries have escalated their troop movements and warlike rhetoric to the point where neither can easily back down. And it is so easy to miscalculate, to follow momentum instead of good sense.

The stakes here are huge: Observers suggest a scenario starting with the next Pakistan-supported atrocity in Kashmir, followed by Indian sorties against Pakistani camps for militants, leading to a general clash between the 1 million troops massed on the frontier, which India begins to win, leading panicked Pakistani generals to launch a nuclear-tipped missile toward New Delhi, resulting in the world's first nuclear exchange.

Experts say millions would die.

Humanity can't abide this scenario, and only the United States, it appears, is in a position to assure it doesn't happen. Both Pakistan and India have entwined Washington in their calculations that have led them to war fever:

• Pakistan believes Washington needs it as an ally in its fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida, so it won't allow India to attack it. But Pakistan presumes too much in its support for the terrorist forces it supports in Kashmir. At the height of the Afghan campaign, it extracted hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters and sent them straight to Kashmir. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is beginning to sound like another ambivalent Arafat with his unabashed support for terrorist aims while claiming to comply with India's demand that he restrict the militant groups that use his country as a base.
• India believes it is destined to be America's strategic partner in the region, and by making clear its readiness to go to war, expects Washington to compel Pakistan to back down, giving it the moral victory that its voters demand.

So India's prime minister tells his soldiers to prepare for a "decisive battle," while Pakistan provocatively tests nuclear-capable missiles and shifts troops from the search for rogue al-Qaida in the west to the eastern front.

The leaders of India and Pakistan understand that war is not in their interest. But they have been reckless in their calculation that the United States will pull them back from the brink despite their escalating rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the Muslim fighters within Kashmir appear to believe that fomenting war between India and Pakistan is a "win-win" situation for them: If Pakistan wins, Kashmir separates from India; if India wins, it will allow Muslim radicals to overthrow Pakistan's secular government.

The Bush administration must recognize that short-term goals must for the moment take a back seat to preventing nuclear holocaust.